SELF-DETERMINATION
The mutual guaranty which was advocated by President Wilson appears as
Article III of his original draft of a Covenant. It reads as follows:
"ARTICLE III
"The Contracting Powers unite in guaranteeing to each other political
independence and territorial integrity; but it is understood between
them that such territorial readjustments, if any, as may in the
future become necessary by reason of changes in present racial
conditions and aspirations or present social and political
relationships, pursuant to the principle of self-determination, and
also such territorial readjustments as may in the judgment of three
fourths of the Delegates be demanded by the welfare and manifest
interest of the peoples concerned, may be effected if agreeable to
those peoples; and that territorial changes may in equity involve
material compensation. The Contracting Powers accept without
reservation the principle that the peace of the world is superior in
importance to every question of political jurisdiction or boundary."
In the revised draft, which he laid before the Commission
on the League of Nations at its first session Article III
became Article 7. It is as follows:
"ARTICLE 7
"The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and preserve as
against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing
political independence of all States members of the League."
The guaranty was finally incorporated in the Treaty of Peace as Article
10. It reads:
"ARTICLE 10
"The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as
against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing
political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any
such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression
the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation
shall be fulfilled."
In the revision of the original draft the modifying clause providing for
future territorial readjustments was omitted. It does not appear in
Article 7 of the draft which was presented to the Commission on the
League of Nations and which formed the basis of its deliberations. In
addition to this modification the words "unite in guaranteeing" in
Article III became "undertake to respect and preserve" in Article 7.
These changes are only important in that they indicate a disposition to
revise the article to meet the wishes, and to remove to an extent the
objections, of some of the foreign delegates who had prepared plans for
a League or at least had definite ideas as to the purposes and functions
of an international organization.
It was generally believed that the elimination of the modifying clause
from the President's original form of guaranty was chiefly due to the
opposition of the statesmen who represented the British Empire in
contradistinction to those who represented the self-governing British
Dominions. It was also believed that this opposition was caused by an
unwillingness on their part to recognize or to apply as a right the
principle of "self-determination" in arranging possible future changes
of sovereignty over territories.
I do not know the arguments which were used to induce the President to
abandon this phrase and to strike it from his article of guaranty. I
personally doubt whether the objection to the words "self-determination"
was urged upon him. Whatever reasons were advanced by his foreign
colleagues, they were successful in freeing the Covenant from the
phrase. It is to be regretted that the influence, which was sufficient
to induce the President to eliminate from his proposed guaranty the
clause containing a formal acceptance of the principle of
"self-determination," was not exerted or else was not potent enough to
obtain from him an open disavowal of the principle as a right standard
for the determination of sovereign authority. Without such a disavowal
the phrase remained as one of the general bases upon which a just peace
should be negotiated. It remained a precept of the international creed
which Mr. Wilson proclaimed while the war was still in progress, for he
had declared, in an address delivered on February 11, 1918, before a
joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, that
"self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle
of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril."
"Self-determination" is as right in theory as the more famous phrase
"the consent of the governed," which has for three centuries been
repeatedly declared to be sound by political philosophers and has been
generally accepted as just by civilized peoples, but which has been for
three centuries commonly ignored by statesmen because the right could
not be practically applied without imperiling national safety, always
the paramount consideration in international and national affairs. The
two phrases mean substantially the same thing and have to an extent been
used interchangeably by those who advocate the principle as a standard
of right. "Self-determination" was not a new thought. It was a
restatement of the old one.
Under the present political organization of the world, based as it is on
the idea of nationality, the new phrase is as unsusceptible of universal
application as the old one was found to be. Fixity of national
boundaries and of national allegiance, and political stability would
disappear if this principle was uniformly applied. Impelled by new
social conditions, by economic interests, by racial prejudices, and by
the various forces which affect society, change and uncertainty would
result from an attempt to follow the principle in every case to which it
is possible to apply it.
Among my notes I find one of December 20, 1918--that is, one week after
the American Commission landed in France--in which I recorded my
thoughts concerning certain phrases or epigrams of the President, which
he had declared to be bases of peace, and which I considered to contain
the seeds of future trouble. In regard to the asserted right of
"self-determination" I wrote:
"When the President talks of 'self-determination' what unit has he in
mind? Does he mean a race, a territorial area, or a community?
Without a definite unit which is practical, application of this
principle is dangerous to peace and stability."
Ten days later (December 30) the frequent repetition of the phrase in
the press and by members of certain groups and unofficial delegations,
who were in Paris seeking to obtain hearings before the Conference,
caused me to write the following:
"The more I think about the President's declaration as to the right
of 'self-determination,' the more convinced I am of the danger of
putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be
the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Congress and create
trouble in many lands.
"What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians,
and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent,
disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and
Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it
be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically
committed?
"The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which
can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In
the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an
idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check
those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that
the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"
Since the foregoing notes were written the impracticability of the
universal or even of the general application of the principle has been
fully demonstrated. Mr. Wilson resurrected "the consent of the governed"
regardless of the fact that history denied its value as a practical
guide in modern political relations. He proclaimed it in the phrase
"self-determination," declaring it to be an "imperative principle of
action." He made it one of the bases of peace. And yet, in the
negotiations at Paris and in the formulation of the foreign policy of
the United States, he has by his acts denied the existence of the right
other than as the expression of a moral precept, as something to be
desired, but generally unattainable in the lives of nations. In the
actual conduct of affairs, in the practical and concrete relations
between individuals and governments, it doubtless exercises and should
exercise a measure of influence, but it is not a controlling influence.
In the Treaty of Versailles with Germany the readjustment of the German
boundaries, by which the sovereignty over millions of persons of German
blood was transferred to the new states of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia,
and the practical cession to the Empire of Japan of the port of
Kiao-Chau and control over the economic life of the Province of Shantung
are striking examples of the abandonment of the principle.
In the Treaty of Saint-Germain the Austrian Tyrol was ceded to the
Kingdom of Italy against the known will of substantially the entire
population of that region.
In both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria
was denied the right to form a political union with Germany, and when an
article of the German Constitution of August, 1919, contemplating a
"reunion" of "German Austria" with the German Empire was objected to by
the Supreme Council, then in session at Paris, as in contradiction of
the terms of the Treaty with Germany, a protocol was signed on September
22, 1919, by plenipotentiaries of Germany and the five Principal Allied
and Associated Powers, declaring the article in the Constitution null
and void. There could hardly be a more open repudiation of the alleged
right of "self-determination" than this refusal to permit Austria to
unite with Germany however unanimous the wish of the Austrian people for
such union.
But Mr. Wilson even further discredited the phrase by adopting a policy
toward Russia which ignored the principle. The peoples of Esthonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have by blood,
language, and racial traits elements of difference which give to each of
them in more or less degree the character of a distinct nationality.
These peoples all possess aspirations to become independent states, and
yet, throughout the negotiations at Paris and since that time, the
Government of the United States has repeatedly refused to recognize the
right of the inhabitants of these territories to determine for
themselves the sovereignty under which they shall live. It has, on the
contrary, declared in favor of a "Great Russia" comprising the vast
territory of the old Empire except the province which belonged to the
dismembered Kingdom of Poland and the lands included within the present
boundaries of the Republic of Finland.
I do not mention the policy of President Wilson as to an undivided
Russia by way of criticism because I believe the policy was and has
continued to be the right one. The reference to it is made for the
sole purpose of pointing out another example of Mr. Wilson's frequent
departure without explanation from his declared standard for the
determination of political authority and allegiance. I think
that it must be conceded that he has by his acts proved that
"self-determination" _is_ "a mere phrase" which ought to be discarded
as misleading because it cannot be practically applied.
It may be pointed out as a matter of special interest to the student of
American history that, if the right of "self-determination" were sound
in principle and uniformly applicable in establishing political
allegiance and territorial sovereignty, the endeavor of the Southern
States to secede from the American Union in 1861 would have been wholly
justifiable; and, conversely, the Northern States, in forcibly
preventing secession and compelling the inhabitants of the States
composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal
Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong
against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which
they were by nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of
the principle of "self-determination" to the political rights at issue
in the American Civil War.
I do not believe that there are many Americans of the present generation
who would support the proposition that the South was inherently right
and the North was inherently wrong in that great conflict. There were,
at the time when the sections were arrayed in arms against each other,
and there may still be, differences of opinion as to the _legal_ right
of secession under the Constitution of the United States, but the
inherent right of a people of a State to throw off at will their
allegiance to the Federal Union and resume complete sovereignty over the
territory of the State was never urged as a conclusive argument. It was
the legal right and not the natural right which was emphasized as
justifying those who took up arms in order to disrupt the Union. But if
an American citizen denies that the principle of "self-determination"
can be rightfully applied to the affairs of his own country, how can he
consistently maintain that it is a right inseparable from a true
conception of political liberty and therefore universally applicable,
just in principle, and wise from the practical point of view?
Of course, those who subscribe to "self-determination" and advocate it
as a great truth fundamental to every political society organized to
protect and promote civil liberty, do not claim it for races, peoples,
or communities whose state of barbarism or ignorance deprive them of the
capacity to choose intelligently their political affiliations. As to
peoples or communities, however, who do possess the intelligence to make
a rational choice of political allegiance, no exception is made, so far
as words go, to the undeviating application of the principle. It is the
affirmation of an unqualified right. It is one of those declarations of
principle which sounds true, which in the abstract may be true, and
which appeals strongly to man's innate sense of moral right and to his
conception of natural justice, but which, when the attempt is made to
apply it in every case, becomes a source of political instability and
domestic disorder and not infrequently a cause of rebellion.
In the settlement of territorial rights and of the sovereignty to be
exercised over particular regions there are several factors which
require consideration. International boundaries may be drawn along
ethnic, economic, geographic, historic, or strategic lines. One or all
of these elements may influence the decision, but whatever argument may
be urged in favor of any one of these factors, the chief object in the
determination of the sovereignty to be exercised within a certain
territory is national safety. National safety is as dominant in the life
of a nation as self-preservation is in the life of an individual. It is
even more so, as nations do not respond to the impulse of
self-sacrifice. With national safety as the primary object to be
attained in territorial settlements, the factors of the problem assume
generally, though not always, the following order of importance: the
strategic, to which is closely allied the geographic and historic; the
economic, affecting the commercial and industrial life of a nation; and
lastly the ethnic, including in the terms such conditions as
consanguinity, common language, and similar social and religious
institutions.
The national safety and the economic welfare of the United States were
at stake in the War of Secession, although the attempt to secede
resulted from institutional rather than ethnic causes. The same was true
when in the Papineau Rebellion of 1837 the French inhabitants of the
Province of Lower Canada attempted for ethnic reasons to free themselves
from British sovereignty. Had the right of "self-determination" in the
latter case been recognized as "imperative" by Great Britain, the
national life and economic growth of Canada would have been strangled
because the lines of communication and the commercial routes to the
Atlantic seaboard would have been across an alien state. The future of
Canada, with its vast undeveloped resources, its very life as a British
colony, depended upon denying the right of "self-determination." It was
denied and the French inhabitants of Quebec were forced against their
will to accept British sovereignty.
Experience has already demonstrated the unwisdom of having given
currency to the phrase "self-determination." As the expression of an
actual right, the application of which is universal and invariable, the
phrase has been repudiated or at least violated by many of the terms of
the treaties which brought to an end the World War. Since the time that
the principle was proclaimed, it has been the excuse for turbulent
political elements in various lands to resist established governmental
authority; it has induced the use of force in an endeavor to wrest the
sovereignty over a territory or over a community from those who have
long possessed and justly exercised it. It has formed the basis for
territorial claims by avaricious nations. And it has introduced into
domestic as well as international affairs a new spirit of disorder. It
is an evil thing to permit the principle of "self-determination" to
continue to have the apparent sanction of the nations when it has been
in fact thoroughly discredited and will always be cast aside whenever it
comes in conflict with national safety, with historic political rights,
or with national economic interests affecting the prosperity of
a nation.
This discussion of the right of "self-determination," which was one of
the bases of peace which President Wilson declared in the winter of
1918, and which was included in the modifying clause of his guaranty as
originally drafted, is introduced for the purpose of showing the
reluctance which I felt in accepting his guidance in the adoption of a
principle so menacing to peace and so impossible of practical
application. As a matter of fact I never discussed the subject with Mr.
Wilson as I purposed doing, because a situation arose on January 10,
1919, which discouraged me from volunteering to him advice on matters
which did not directly pertain to legal questions and to the
international administration of legal justice.